Hi J,you wrote "I have a Copenhagen Pedersen serial # CC 401 J. Is it possible to date?".I can tell you, that your Copenhagen Pedersen frame was build as number 401 in the year of 1993. CC means Copenhagen Cykel.Kind regardspedersenfreunde

i recently bought 2.hand a beautiful white copenhagen pedersen and would like to know date of manufacture. the number is hard to identify but looks like "C 189" than there is a gap and another mark, could be "T"?many thanks,michael, in new zealand

Well - dating danish sold bicycles is quite easy due to danish legislation. All danish manufactures and importers of bicycle are registered and has a unique code of (mostly) 2 letters as identifyer; CC is at present registeret to Jesper Sølling Cykelprokdution and CS to Christiania Bikes.I believe (but has no proof) that CS is the original "brand name" as it could be short for "Christiania Smedien" (Christiania Blacksmith) as it was where Jesper Sølling started the production in '78. CC is very close to "Christiania Cykler" (Christiania Bicycles) that was formed later - and still sells a version of the Pedersen.Seen someone claim that Jesper Sølling is back at the blacksmith shop today and are hand-producing Copenhagen Pedersen again.

But after the 2 letters in the frame number we have an actually unlimited space for a seria number - and then followed by the interesting last letter; the one that id's the prodution year according to below scheme:

Bicycle manufacturing dates in Denmark

jesper-numbering.jpg (104.52 KiB) Viewed 16626 times

Which makes it easy for me to ID my own recent 2nd hand buy; CC 128 R - translating to Copenhagen Pedersen (as badge claims) serial no 128 in the year of 1999.

Why not 1978 or even 1957 ? Because I don't believe Shimano made the Deore V-brakes in '57 or '78 - I'm quite sure powder coating was not around in '57 - could be in '78, but seller told me he got it from Jesper Sølling around 2004-5, because he (seller) was going to Japan to make a sales tour promoting danish articles, Pedersen included ;O)

Another interesting thing is that we can have a 3rd letter in front of the serial number; a W indicates that the frame is imported. This could very well be true, as Jesper Sølling for some time had a collaboration with Kalle Kalkhoff (Kalkhoff is an old bicycle brand in Germany), where they had frames build in former east europe.

It seem though that this partnership didn't turn out so well - according to what I have found on the net of stories, the rights to produce Pedersen is now with Kalkhoff - but that seems not to be with Jesper Sølling's blessings.

OK - just looked up to whom "CC" and "CS" is regustered; "CC" is registered to Jesper Sølling since 01.01.1978 and "CS" to Christiania Bikes since 23.09.1980.Info found in official database ove danish bicycle manufactures and importersSo I was precisely - wrong ;o)